By Jeffrey Page

As the urgency in the discussion of the need for stricter gun laws increases, allow me to tell you about the moment when my ambivalence about guns turned to something else.

It was during basic training at Fort Dix in the brutally hot summer of 1964. We, in Tango Company – “Tough Tango! All the way and a little bit more!” we were ordered to shout several times a day – had undergone any number of training classes at the rifle ranges. Our weapon was the M-14, a particularly nasty instrument that the army issued as standard equipment from 1959 to 1970. Set on automatic, the M-14 could fire at the rate of 750 rounds per minute. Our ammunition clips held 20 rounds. This was not a weapon for sport.

With initial rifle training over, we knew how to fire the M-14. Now we marched to a new range for combat training. Here we would work in teams of two. My buddy, a guy named Vince from Newburgh, and I faced downrange. He was about 15 yards to my right. The idea was that he would make a dash forward, firing at an imaginary enemy, while I covered him. Then I would move forward and he would cover me.

The ammunition was live. As a result, Al Minicus, our normally laconic platoon sergeant, informed us – many, many times – that we must be facing straight ahead before firing our weapons. Any deviation from this rule could result in extra duty at best, a court martial at worst.

As Vince started forward, I rose to one knee and fired into a thicket of bushes about 50 yards straight ahead of me. Then, as Vince dropped to the ground, I stood and ran past him while maintaining the 15-yard space between us. He now was firing to cover me.

Just then, I heard the training officer blow his whistle, which meant, in descending order of immediacy: cease firing at once; get your finger off the trigger; freeze; bring your weapon diagonally across your chest to port arms; stand at attention.

The officer, a young lieutenant, approached me, called Vince over, and asked if I knew why he had whistled. I did not, but wondered if this somehow was going to turn into an extra tour on KP or guard duty. But I was innocent.

The lieutenant said that Vince had fired his weapon several times at a 45-degree angle to his left – meaning right at me. “At your head,” the officer said. Vince started apologizing and the lieutenant told him to shut up.

I felt a surge of nausea. I felt my knees weaken. I had a vision of my head in pieces. I found myself leaning on my rifle like a crutch, something you’re never supposed to do. The officer then asked me if I wanted to have a few moments alone with Vince behind the latrine so I could “deck this sorry son of a bitch.” I did not.

At that moment, I threw up an ocean of breakfast onto the rifle range, and this seemed to annoy the lieutenant as much as Vince’s misdirected firing had. Then, using standard army logic, Sgt. Minicus came over and said that Vince was lucky because he hadn’t hurt me and would be punished only with an extra KP duty. He never mentioned how lucky I was that Vince had missed.

I finished basic training and later returned to my National Guard unit in New York where, in the next 5½ years of my enlistment, I never had to carry a weapon with live ammunition. Which was fine with me, almost as fine as being alive.

Vince wasn’t evil, just careless. Adam Lanza and all the others who have contaminated our society with their unhappiness weren’t careless, just evil.

And armed.

Tags: army basic training, Fort Dix, guns

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